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FNATIC MONTHLY | December Edition

--By Matthew

2017 is now coming to a close and the snowy dust is beginning to settle as esports goes on its brief holiday break.

Since the League of Legends season concluded in China at Worlds and BlizzCon marked the end of the Heroes of the Storm season, our teams continued to march on through November and December. Some reaching new heights, some preparing for a new year by returning to former heights.

One of our newest teams, Fnatic Paladins, attended the PPL Offline Finals in Atlanta, Georgia in the middle of November. Having gone through the EU PPL as by far the best team in Europe, we went to the offline qualifier confident of making it to Hi-Rez Expo.

Despite losing to Na’Vi in the main tournament, a win over Renegades in the Wildcard tournament booked our place to the inaugural Paladins World Championship on 4th January.

Fnatic’s most successful team of the year, Fnatic HotS, cemented themselves as one of the best in the world throughout 2017. The Mid-Season Brawl champions finished the season with a second runners-up finish in a row at BlizzCon, but headed to Beijing for the Gold Club World Championship with two new players, BadBenny and Ménè.

Despite changing our offlaner and ranged flex players, we finished the tournament at the Water Cube in fourth place and now prepare to replicate 2017’s form in a new season of HGC come January.

Also travelling to China recently were Fnatic Rocket League. The recently promoted RLCS team have started their time in Black and Orange successfully, and were invited to play Royal Never Give Up at the Tencent Game Festival for the release of their game in China. The trip climaxed with a 4-0 win over RNG.

Despite the League of Legends season being over, Rekkles and sOAZ headed to to play for the EU LCS All-Stars. The event was each players’ third time representing the region, but the team sadly didn’t make it out of groups. In an epic Garen mirror match, Rekkles was downed, too, by PraY in the 1v1 tournament.

Our CS:GO team have had a busy month. We qualified for WESG in China having travelled to the European qualifier with 15-year old Brollan standing-in for Krimz.

We then saw the live culmination of the two league tournaments, ESL Pro League and ECS Season 4, in Odense, Denmark and Cancún, Mexico respectively. Two semifinal finishes are bittersweet, but demonstrate an upward curve for the still-growing team.

Lastly, our Dota 2 team finished the year returning to some fine form. Although we fell out of the DreamHack Winter major, DreamLeague Season 8, having picked up just one map, we travelled to Los Angeles for DOTA Summit 8 and got to our first final at a global tournament since 2014.

Despite losing 3-1 to Virtus Pro in the final, the runners-up finish puts the team onto the Dota Pro Circuit Rankings list for the first time, from which eight teams qualify for The International 2018.

We end the year proud of what we have achieved in esports. But, even more than that, we go into 2018 with hope, hype and anticipation. Have a happy holiday, but we’ll see you on the livestreams and at LAN in January!